Life is Good when you Run Live — and life is even better when you save money. But time is running out to save money on SAPPHIRE NOW registration with Early Bird pricing, which ends on Friday.
No matter when you buy your tickets to SAP and ASUG’s largest global business technology event, once you arrive you’ll be able to connect with a community that uses SAP software every day — including Life is Good co-founders Bert and John Jacobs. These guys know how to Run Live.
Boston-based clothing manufacturer Life is Good relies on SAP technology to run its Live Business, selling merchandise through more than 4,500 retail outlets in more than 30 countries. That’s a lot of high-tech business acumen the Jacobs brothers will bring to their guest keynote address at the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) at SAPPHIRE NOW + ASUG Annual Conference in May.
Knowing Your Customer
“Over the years, we learned so much from our customers,” John Jacobs told CNBC last year. “Whether it’s in wartime, whether the economy is struggling, people want something positive to rally around … fortunately, our brand has become one of those things.”
Knowing customers and their pain points is big part of any business, whether it’s selling technology or t-shirts. That kind of empathy for the customer has been one of SAP’s guiding stars for years, and — toward that end — SAPPHIRE NOW exists to help SAP technology users:
- Hone their digital business strategies
- Optimize their technology investment
- Meet the entire ecosystem of SAP partners
It’s all part of running live — in the moment, meeting your customers wherever they are, whenever they need you. A Live Business can do this because everyone across the organization works from one version of the truth, on one platform, from anywhere and on any device.
“Every encounter with our customers means we have to understand their customers,” SAP CEO Bill McDermott said during his SAPPHIRE NOW keynote last year. “Everything has to start with empathy for the end user and the experience they are getting from your company.”
Learn About Machine Learning
“Life is Good is all about joy, but it takes its business seriously … because more growth and efficiency means more time and money to put into its charity, festivals and community support,” SAP’s David Trites stated in a profile about the company. “Life is Good’s business partners are also happy with the increased level of accuracy and efficiency achieved in the business.”
A great leap forward in this kind of accuracy and efficiency is on the horizon with SAP S/4 HANA as the core of digital transformation, as SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner will discuss during his keynote. The next generation of intelligent applications will understand and learn from users, enterprise data and processes — and they will streamline operations by automatically assessing business situations, indicating required actions and proposing solutions to problems.
The end goal is to boost efficiency by delegating tedious, time-consuming tasks to the intelligent apps. With software sorting more mundane issues, people are free to focus on more important work.
Livin’ the Good Life
SAPPHIRE NOW offers a way for executives, business leaders and IT professionals to learn more about how SAP users have increased growth, efficiency and accuracy, as Life is Good has done. And it’s not just about the technology.
“The Jacobs … are masters of attitude,” Inc. stated about Bert and John. “They urge [people] to think about their chores and responsibilities, not as things they ‘have to do,’ but as things they ‘get to do’ — because they have free minds and working bodies and live in a society where most basic needs are covered.”
Technology has helped Life is Good streamline and build its massive global enterprise, in part because the company’s name is more than a slick motto. It’s a reminder of their mission, “to spread the power of optimism.”
“We want to spread this message and help people understand the depth of what that means,” John Jacobs told Business Insider last year. “It’s not that life is easy or life is perfect — it’s that life is good.”
SAPPHIRE NOW will run May 16-18 in Orlando. Register by Friday to save $300 with Early Bird pricing.
Follow Derek on Twitter: @DKlobucher
